Cali Vacation Day 1

Friday, March 20, didn't start off exactly as I would have liked.  We'd had a stomach bug hit our house earlier that week, and Aaron and Josh were the latest victims.  They stayed home from school sick (they stayed home Thursday too).  When I went upstairs to get Kate up that morning, I found her in a crib full of puke.  I stripped her down and carried her down to my bathtub to give her a bath.  I asked Owen to sit by the tub with her, while I went up to gather all the blankets out her crib and put them in the wash.  While I was gone, Owen yelled, "Kate's trying to get out of the tub!".  I hollered back for him to tell her to stay in a little bit longer.  He yelled back, "But she pooped in the tub!"  So not the start to the day I wanted!  Puke and poop!  As you can imagine, Kate was pretty freaked out by the whole thing.  She's never ever done that before. 

I cleaned Kate up, then bleached the tub.  Then I spent the rest of my morning trying to comfort a sick baby and trying to get everything packed and loaded into the car.

I had Scott pick the kids up and check them out of school at lunch, then we all worked full force to get all the last little things ready to go.  We were ready to hit the road by 2.

Our van was packed full.  I had things in the back, under seats, and even took out two seats to make the isle big enough to pack things in.

The driving started out pretty peaceful.  We put a movie on for the kids, and everyone was excited to be on our way.  About 45 minutes into the drive, though, Nate threw up.  We found a gas station to stop at and got him cleaned up.  We were smart and brought a whole stack of bowls to pass around to all the sickies.  Nate continued to throw up the rest of that day driving.  Poor kid.

The next one to throw up was Kate.  Here in the middle of nowhere (I snapped a picture to remember it), we stopped on the side of the road and I changed Kate's clothes, and let her get some fresh air.
 

We stopped at a rest stop 4 hours into the drive and had dinner (food I had packed).  By this point, we had stopped 5 times along the side of the road for sick kids.   Nate's face says it all - it was horrible!

After that stop, we switched the seating up a little bit.  Savannah has an extreme aversion to puke, and was really freaked out about having to sit by Kate.  So we let Kate take a turn up by Sara and Owen went back to sit with Savannah.

The next 4 hours in the car were a little more peaceful, and we finally arrived at our hotel in Klamath Falls, Oregon.  This was the first time we'd stayed in a hotel room with all the kids.  We've always rented a house to stay in.  I was surprised with how well the kids did in the hotel.  We got two rooms, each with 2 queen beds and a sofa sleeper.  Savannah, Josh and Sara stayed in one room, and the rest of us stayed in the other room. 

We left our house in Eagle that day at 2 in the afternoon, and we arrived at the hotel at 10 that night (which was really 11:00 our time, we had a time zone change).  So, 9 hours of traveling!  7 hours of driving, and 2 hours of stops along the way.  But we survived it!